Sleeping Rough Across Europe With a Harmonica

Before he became one of Britain's best-known singers, Rod Stewart was a young musician with a harmonica and very little money. In 1962 he teamed up with the folk singer Wizz Jones, playing harmonica for him, and the two set out to make a living from their music.

After touring around the United Kingdom, the pair crossed to the Continent. They went first to Paris, where they spent their nights sleeping under bridges, and then travelled south towards Barcelona. According to Far Out Magazine, they slept rough for the whole of the trip, with no fixed lodging along the way. Another account of the story says the two toured Europe by day and slept beneath bridges at night.

The journey ended in Spain. Police there arrested the two musicians for vagrancy, which meant being found without a home or visible means of support, and they were deported back to Britain. For Stewart it was a hard lesson in what life on the road could be like, but it did not end his ambitions.

Back in London, he found his way into the city's lively music scene of the time. From there he built the career that eventually made him famous, and the episode in Spain remains a small, little-known chapter of his early years, one of several stories about musicians who were once sent home from foreign countries.